IT spending may outpace 2013, survey by Montvale company says

Spending on information technology is expected to increase this year, possibly surpassing the growth in 2013, according to a survey released Wednesday.

The bullish 2014 outlook is contained in the results of Montvale-based Data Inc.'s IT Decision 2013 survey, its second such polling of IT professionals.

Eighty-one percent of survey respondents reported that their company's IT spending increased in 2013 from the previous year, when 68 percent reported an increase.This year's survey participants also were more optimistic about the coming year, with 95 percent saying that IT spending would either increase or stay the same. Last year, 88 percent felt that 2013 spending would exceed 2012's.

"We're definitely seeing a guarded increase in spending in our larger clients," said Susan Leicht, a Data Inc. senior account executive said of the survey. "I use the term guarded because the line managers are now being required to go above and beyond with justification for their positions. They're being asked to get additional signatures before their budgets are approved."

The rosy forecast follows a year in which more corporate IT projects were awarded than the previous year, and in which there was an 8 percent increase, to 21 percent, in projects exceeding $100 million.

Data Inc., an IT software and service provider, conducted its most recent survey from September through mid-November last year. It includes responses from nearly 225 IT professionals.

Application development, at 66 percent, and application testing/quality assurance, at 61 percent, were the top two of IT investments that survey respondents reported for 2013, and should continue to be among the top priorities in 2014, the survey found. Mobile apps have come to the forefront, with 44 percent saying that their development is a top priority.

The survey also found that corporate satisfaction with IT vendors is down, with just 25 percent of respondents saying that they were "very satisfied" with their vendors compared with 56 percent last year. A majority, however, or 66 percent, said they were "satisfied" with their IT service provider in 2013.

"This is a surprise even to us, because it has been our experience that most large corporations use offshore services in some measure," said Conrad Leao, Data Inc.'s vice president of operations. "This is a number that we will be closely monitoring, because it currently seems to fly in the face of our own experience."

The survey also found that diversity is a factor in choosing an IT supplier, with 58 percent of respondents describing minority-small-disadvantaged business status as a strong factor in their evaluation criteria. But an IT vendor's experience and expertise ranked as most important by 84 percent of the responses.